The roughly 586 former military housing units on Pine Brook Road — as well as about 120 units that formerly housed Fort Monmouth officers’ families on the main post’s Oceanport portion — will be offered to developers in coming weeks by the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority.

Tarantolo said the borough does not need any more rental units, because nearly half its residents already live in apartments.

But the executive director of FMERA — the state authority charged with overseeing the former Fort Monmouth redevelopment — said there may not be any way to restrict rentals from that property.

Although both moves come in the wake of superstorm Sandy, only the officers’ family housing portion is a direct response to the storm, said FMERA Executive Director Bruce Steadman.

Steadman said FMERA already was moving on offering the Howard Commons property for sale.

“We always wanted to get that out by the end of 2012,” he said. “The officers’ housing portion is definitely accelerated, and I think it could be said that it’s certainly as a result of the need for more permanent housing because of the storm.”

The authority at its meeting Wednesday approved a resolution to issue a request for offers to purchase the officers’ housing.

Steadman said interest in both properties has been strong.

“We’ve shown the officers’ housing to probably seven or eight major developers from around the country,” he said. “At Howard Commons, we probably showed it to a dozen or 15.”

Steadman said that while FMERA understands Tarantolo’s desire to not have any more rentals in the borough, what the eventual new owner of the Howard Commons property does will be determined by economics.

“We clearly hear the mayor’s interest and the borough of Eatontown’s interest because of the unusually high number of rental units already in Eatontown — but we can’t stipulate (no rentals) in the RFP, so we’re looking forward to receiving proposals that would accommodate both rental and for-sale portions,” Steadman said. “Then we’ll have to make a decision on what’s best in terms of the re-use plan and the community.”

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“I’m ready to argue the issue,” Tarantolo said. “We already have about 47 percent of the people living in town living in apartments. We need home ownership.”

While the former use encompassed 586 units, a redeveloped Howard Commons would hold only about 270 townhouses — 20 percent of which would have to be earmarked for low- and moderate-income families, Tarantolo said.

He said he has worked out an “understanding” with Habitat for Humanity to work with the property’s eventual redeveloper to build the affordable housing portion, allowing the redeveloper to concentrate on market-value housing.

Tarantolo said the borough’s master plan precludes rentals in the Howard Commons area.

Tarantolo said the complex has been largely vacant since the early 1990s, shortly after the Army replaced many of the units’ appliances and windows.

“There are appliances there that have never been turned on, and new windows that have never been opened,” he said.

Tarantolo said he knows of no concerns about schoolchildren flooding the district, mainly because Eatontown schooled Fort Monmouth children for decades before the fort closed in 2011.

“We could probably handle a couple hundred children,” he said.

The officers’ family housing is located on both sides of Greely Field, and encompass Russel, Carty and Allen avenues, and the non-commissioned officers’ quarters on Gosselin Avenue, according to Steadman’s memo to the FMERA board.

The units are duplex, fourplex and single-family homes, he said.

The target area has been nominated for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, so any redevelopment would have to adhere to strict regulations, he said. The buildings’ facades and surrounding property could not be altered, but the interiors could.

“They can knock down interior walls and turn them into different kinds of residential units,” he said.

New buildings whose facades mirrored that of the existing structures also could be built, Steadman said.

Oceanport Mayor Michael Mahon said in an email that offering the former officer housing for sale will “without a doubt” have an impact on borough schools.

“I suspect it will be manageable, as these units have always been part of the re-use plan and built-in to the estimated numbers of school-age children,” he said in the email. “Many of these families may live in Oceanport, or other Shore Regional (High School) communities already, limiting the impact.

“Time will tell, but we’ll identify the potential and work with the school district to understand and manage the outcome,” Mahon said.